4 SEO Tips for Voice Search

4 SEO Tips for Voice Search

In a mobile-first world, it’s no wonder that voice-enabled search is rising to the top of Internet usage trends. In fact, ComScore projects that 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. This makes it extremely important for us as marketers to take this trend into serious consideration when creating content and developing an SEO strategy.

While we’ve spent most of our Internet-surfing days learning to be succinct and brief when using search engines, voice search is more conversational – thus making how we approach it a bit different. For example, I am at home looking for a dinner recipe on my laptop and realize I need to figure out how many tablespoons are in a ½ cup. I may type into google “convert tablespoons to cups” or “number of tablespoons in a cup.” If I was in my kitchen cooking, however, and needed to get the same answer from my Google Home, I would ask something along the lines of “Hey Google, how many tablespoons are in ½ cup?” See the difference?

The result of this is that voice search queries tend to be longer and explicitly ask a who, what, why, when or how question with the expectation that the search engine will return an answer. This is just one of the differences voice search presents, and marketers need to identify them and keep them in mind when developing and implementing an SEO strategy.

Check out these four SEO tips and get your site ready for the voice search takeover!

1. Know What Your Keywords Are

There are many different channels your target audience may take to get to your website, including organically via search engine results pages (SERPs), directly via typing your web address into their browser and via social media platforms. In order to know what your audience is searching for and how they research your services or products, you need to do a little research yourself. Know what keywords to keep in your toolbox, and be sure to use them in your website content.

Be sure to remember that voice search is conversational, thus your website should answer questions as if there was an in-person interaction occurring.

2. Make Your Interface Mobile-Friendly

With the rise of Google Home and Alexa, it’s important to remember that voice search is very much a mobile phenomenon. Be sure that your website is responsively designed and mobile-friendly using a tool like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

When it comes to User Experience (UX), you also want to be sure that your check your website speed and optimize it. This is important for both mobile and desktop devices.

3. Make FAQ pages Your Friends Most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages are conversational, thus being a natural asset to include on your website for voice search. In order to make sure that your FAQ page is optimized for both text and voice services, make sure you use long-tail keywords and offer succinct answers. If you have the resources, you can even create more content around your FAQs in the way of blogposts addressing the truly most-asked questions. Think along the lines of a pricing breakdown or feature highlight reel.

4. Don’t Ignore Structed Data Markup

Structed data markup (or schema markup) is used by search engines to classify and organize a website’s content. If you optimized your site’s markup for voice search, you have a great chance of edging out your competition – just make sure you have some developer resources for this step, as it is more advanced than the previous ones.

First, they will want to check your website’s structured data for recommended changes and understand what kinds of markup to include. It’s also important to consistently make updates and stick to a schedule for these updates.

Once you have an understanding of voice search and its implications for SEO strategy, you can make necessary changes to your website and take advantage of this search revolution. Let us know in the comments below how you plan on optimizing your current SEO strategy for voice search!